DOUGLAS, J., dissenting 408 U.S. before a committee is irrelevant. For, "[t]he claim of an unworthy purpose does not destroy the privilege." Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U. S. 367, 377. If there is an abuse, there is a remedy; but it is legislative, not judicial. As to Senator Gravel's efforts to publish the Subcommittee record's contents, wide dissemination of this material as an educational service is as much a part of the Speech or Debate Clause philosophy as mailing under a frank a Senator's or a Congressman's speech across the Nation. As mentioned earlier, "[i]t is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function." W. Wilson, Congressional Government 303 (1885), quoted with approval in Tenney v. Brandhove, supra, at 377 n. 6. "From the earliest times in its history, the Congress has assiduously performed an 'informing function,'" Watkins v. United States, 354 U. S. 178, 200 n. 33. "Legislators have an obligation to take positions on controversial political questions so that their constituents can be fully informed by them." Bond v. Floyd, 385 U. S. 116, 136. We said in United States v. Johnson, 383 U. S. 169, 179, that the Speech or Debate Clause established a "legislative privilege" that protected a member of Congress against prosecution "by an unfriendly executive and conviction by a hostile judiciary" in order, as Mr. Justice Harlan put it, to ensure "the independence of the legislature." That hostility emanates from every stage of the present proceedings. It emphasizes the need to construe the Speech or Debate Clause generously, not niggardly. If republication of a Senator's speech in a newspaper carries the privilege, as it doubtless does, then republication of the exhibits introduced 606 DOUGLAS, J., dissenting at a hearing before Congress must also do so. That means that republication by Beacon Press is within the ambit of the Speech or Debate Clause and that the confidences of the Senator in arranging it are not subject to inquiry "in any other Place" than the Congress. It is said that though the Senator is immune from questioning as to what he said and did in preparation for the committee hearing and in conducting it, his aides may be questioned in his stead. Such easy circumvention of the Speech or Debate Clause would indeed make it a mockery. The aides and agents such as Beacon Press must be taken as surrogates for the Senator and the confidences of the job that they enjoy are his confidences that the Speech or Debate Clause embraces. II The secrecy of documents in the Executive Department has been a bone of contention between it and Congress from the beginning. Most discussions have 3 3 See Developments In The Law-The National Security Interest and Civil Liberties, 85 Harv. L. Rev. 1130, 1207-1215 (1972); Note, The Right of Government Employees to Furnish Information to Congress: Statutory and Constitutional Aspects, 57 Va. L. Rev. 885-887 (1971); Berger, Executive Privilege v. Congressional Inquiry, 12 U. C. L. A. L. Rev. 1044 (1965); Schwartz, Executive Privilege and Congressional Investigatory Power, 47 Calif. L. Rev. 3 (1959); Executive Privilege: The Withholding of Information by the Executive, Hearing on S. 1125 before the Subcommittee on Separation of Powers of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 92d Cong., 1st Sess. (1971). There is no express statutory authority for the classification procedure used currently by the bureaucracies, although it has been claimed that Congress has recognized it in such measures as the exemptions from the disclosure requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U. S. C. § 552 (b) and the espionage laws, 18 U. S. C. §§ 792-799. Rather, the classification regime has been implemented through a series of executive orders DOUGLAS, J., dissenting 408 U.S. centered on the scope of the executive privilege in stamping documents as "secret," "top secret," "confidential," and so on, thus withholding them from the eyes of Congress and the press. The practice has reached large proportions, it being estimated that (1) Over 30,000 people in the Executive Branch have the power to wield the classification stamp.* (2) The Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Atomic Energy Commission have over 20 million classified documents in their files. (3) Congress appropriates approximately $15 billion annually without most of its members or the public or the press knowing for what purposes the money is to be used.5 The problem looms large as one of separation of described in Developments In The Law, supra, at 1192-1198. It has also been claimed that several sections of Art. II (such as the designation of the President as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy) confer upon the Executive an inherent power to classify documents. See Report of the Commission on Government Security, S. Doc. No. 64, 85th Cong., 1st Sess., 158 (1957). + Hearings on S. 1125, supra, n. 3, at 517-518. One estimate of the number of officials who can classify documents is even higher. In the Department of Defense alone, 803 persons have the authority to classify documents Top Secret; 7,687 have permission to stamp them Secret, and 31,048 have the authorization to denominate papers Confidential. United States Government Information Policies and Practices-The Pentagon Papers, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations, 92d Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 2, p. 599 (statement of David Cooke, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense). 5 Senator Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently testified that his committee had been so unsuccessful in obtaining accurate information about the Vietnam war from the Executive Branch that it was required to hire its own investigators and send them to Southeast Asia. Hearings on S. 1125, supra, n. 3, at 206. 606 powers. DOUGLAS, J., dissenting Woodrow Wilson wrote about it in terms of the "informing function" of Congress: " 6 "It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. It is meant Unless Con to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody the Classification of documents is a concern of the Congress. It is, however, no concern of the courts, as I see it, how a 6 Congressional Government 303-304 (1885). DOUGLAS, J., dissenting 408 U.S. document is stamped in an Executive Department or whether a committee of Congress can obtain the use of it. The federal courts do not sit as an ombudsman refereeing the disputes between the other two branches. The federal courts do become vitally involved whenever their power is sought to be invoked either to protect the press against censorship as in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U. S. 713, or to protect the press against punishment for publishing "secret" documents or to protect an individual against his disclosure of their contents for any of the purposes of the First Amendment. Forcing the press to become the Government's coconspirator in maintaining state secrets is at war with the objectives of the First Amendment. That guarantee was designed in part to ensure a meaningful version of self-government by immersing the people in a “steady, robust, unimpeded, and uncensored flow of opinion and reporting which are continuously subjected to critique, rebuttal, and re-examination." Branzburg v. Hayes, post, at 715 (DOUGLAS, J., dissenting); Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U. S. 444; Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557, 564; Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U. S. 301, 308 (BRENNAN, J., concurring); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 270. As I have said, in dissent, elsewhere, e. g., Branzburg, supra; Kleindienst v. Mandel, post, at 771, that Amendment is aimed at protecting not only speakers and writers but also listeners and readers. The essence of our form of governing was at the heart of Mr. Justice Black's reminder in the Pentagon Papers case that "[t]he press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people." 403 U. S., at 717 (concurring opinion). Similarly, Senator Sam Ervin has observed: "When the people do not know what their government is doing, those who govern are not accountable for their actions and accountability is basic to the democratic system. By using devices of secrecy, the gov |